Your Map for the Cloud Security Maze: An Integrated Cloud Security Solution That’s Part of an Exposure Management Approach

Check out highlights from the IDC white paper “Bridging Cloud Security and Exposure Management for Unified Risk Reduction,” which explains how CNAPPs help security teams tame the complexity of multi-cloud environments by shifting from a reactive, alert-driven model to a proactive exposure management strategy.

Organizations’ rapid expansion into the cloud has created a complex and thorny security landscape that often throws security teams into a counterproductive reactive cycle. As they breathlessly chase myriad alerts from a patchwork of fragmented tools, they struggle to piece together a coherent picture of their ever-expanding attack surface. This lack of visibility leads to a constant struggle to prioritize the most critical cyber threats.

If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. Traditional security models fall short when you need to manage security across dynamic, multi-cloud environments. The good news? There's a better way forward: Leveraging an integrated cloud native application protection platform (CNAPP) that is is part of an exposure management strategy.

A new white paper from industry analyst firm IDC, sponsored by Tenable and titled “Bridging Cloud Security and Exposure Management for Unified Risk Reduction,” sheds light on how CNAPPs offer a transformative approach to cloud security. 

“In this environment, cloud security can no longer be an isolated function. CNAPP represents a critical evolution in the enterprise security strategy — enabling teams to secure every layer of the cloud stack while unifying visibility, accelerating response, and reducing risk at scale,” the IDC white paper reads.

In this blog, we’ll outline key insights from the white paper, including why a CNAPP-centric strategy that incorporates exposure management has become essential for combating increasingly sophisticated and aggressive cyber attacks.

The CNAPP solution: Unifying your defenses

CNAPPs are a game-changer. As the IDC white paper explains, a CNAPP unifies multiple security disciplines into a single, integrated platform. Think of it as your central command center for cloud security, bringing together capabilities that include:

• Identifying and remediating misconfigurations (cloud security posture management, or CSPM)
• Protecting your virtual machines, containers, and serverless environments (cloud workload protection, or CWP)
• Managing identities and permissions (cloud infrastructure entitlement management or CIEM)
• Safeguarding your cloud data (data security posture management, or DSPM)
• Securing your cloud AI systems (artificial intelligence security posture management, or AI-SPM)
• Protecting your Kubernetes environments (Kubernetes security posture management, or KSPM)
• Managing your vulnerabilities from code to cloud, including infrastructure-as-code scanning

By breaking down the silos between these different security functions, a CNAPP provides a holistic view of your entire cloud estate, IDC explains. It allows you to see the connections between different types of risks, such as how a misconfiguration in one area could be exploited by an over-privileged identity to gain access to sensitive data. This contextual understanding is crucial for moving from a reactive to a proactive security posture.

These features, combined with a focus on exposure management, are what separate a truly effective CNAPP from a basic one. “Decision makers are encouraged to explore CNAPP solutions that integrate effectively with exposure management platforms, offering unified visibility and facilitating prioritized risk mitigation,” the IDC white paper reads.

At Tenable, we define exposure management as a strategic, business-centric approach to cybersecurity that you can use to proactively assess and remediate your most critical cyber risks. In our view, exposure management transcends traditional vulnerability management by unifying business and risk contexts with threat intelligence. That way, it helps you expose, prioritize and close vulnerabilities while reducing risk and shrinking your attack surface.

In fact, as the IDC chart below shows, CNAPPs and exposure management are very much on the radar of security managers looking for emerging technologies and solutions to improve their organizations’ security capabilities.
 

^{(n = 600; Source: IDC’s AP Security Survey, 2024. Notes: This is an IDC Syndicated Survey. Respondents were professionals who are managers and above.)}

Your path to a robust cloud security posture

The message from the IDC white paper is clear: a CNAPP-centric approach is the future of cloud security. A CNAPP does more than just consolidate tools: It fundamentally enhances how you manage risk in the cloud. A CNAPP empowers your cybersecurity teams with the visibility, context and actionable insights they need to stay ahead of attackers.

“A cloud- and environment-agnostic CNAPP strategy – and particularly one that incorporates exposure management – facilitates seamless integration across platforms, empowering organizations to maintain control, optimize resource utilization, and fortify their security posture,” the IDC white paper reads.

CISOs also benefit, as their role evolves and security priorities shift towards automation, end-to-end visibility and real-time threat management. 

“Exposure management inclusive of cloud security aligns with these priorities by providing contextual risk insights into potential security gaps and facilitating timely interventions,” the IDC white paper reads.

Get all the details

The full IDC white paper goes into much greater detail on all of these topics, and more. It offers:

• a comprehensive look at the current cloud security landscape;
• a deep dive into the capabilities of a modern CNAPP; and
• a guide to what you should look for in a solution. 

It also provides an in-depth look at Tenable's approach to cloud security, highlighting how our Tenable Cloud Security CNAPP integrates with our Tenable One Exposure Management Platform. 

According to IDC, the combination of Tenable Cloud Security and Tenable One “eliminates blind spots across cloud and hybrid environments.” 

“This integration enables stakeholders to understand and mitigate cloud risks within the context of their broader IT and cloud landscape,” the IDC white paper reads.

The journey to cloud security maturity is challenging, but you can succeed by adopting a CNAPP-centric approach that integrates exposure management.

Don't let the complexity of the cloud leave you vulnerable. To get the full picture and start building your roadmap to a more secure cloud, download the IDC white paper “Bridging Cloud Security and Exposure Management for Unified Risk Reduction.”